Revealed: Most popular times supervisors review work

Supervisors are most likely to be reviewing and marking up draft emails from their teams between 12pm-1pm on Fridays, accordingly to Sideline usage data collected over the past 15 months.

And while you might think this reflects supervisors wanting to clear their inboxes before long Friday lunches, it turns out the fifth most popular time for reviewing work is 3pm-4pm on the same day. Spare a thought for opposing counsel no doubt receiving the fruits of those efforts shortly afterwards, just before the weekend.

Other findings include:

• Thursdays are the most popular day for supervisors to review draft emails.
• Across the week, 3pm-4pm is the most popular time for supervisors to review draft emails.
• During usual working hours, Monday 9am-10am is unsurprisingly the least popular time for supervisors to review draft emails, followed by Tuesdays at 1pm-2pm.
• There is around 15% more draft email review activity between 1pm-6pm, compared to 8am-1pm.

Overall however, the differences are slight and it’s clear supervisors are working solidly throughout the week. Check out the chart below for more details!

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About the data:

• The data is made up tens of thousands of instances of Sideline usage, across law firms in the US, UK and Australia between September 2023 and January 2025.
• This is not meant to be a scientific study. Please take the findings with a pinch of salt!
• Sideline usage is treated as a proxy for supervisors reviewing draft emails. Specifically, email redlines run in Sideline (which typically means users are editing draft emails they have received, or viewing the changes made by others to draft emails) were used as the basis for the data. It is obviously not a perfect proxy.
• The data was adjusted for timezones, but the adjustment will not be 100% accurate in all circumstances given people may work from different locations to their firm’s main office, nor was adjustment made for daylight savings.